Tesla Model X

Sunday, September 3, 2017

Hey bros, I traded in my Range Rover Sport 4.4l for a Model X 75D a few weeks ago. I've been wanted to write down my thoughts somewhere. So here we go.

Why

I don't give much of a shit about the environment. If the car creates less pollution than my RRS, great. Primarily I'm a nerd and I love the idea of the car being 90% computer.
I've been considering a Tesla for ages, and planned to order a custom designed one. In the end I decided to order a showroom one, because it was 2 week delivery.. and I didn't want to wait for 3 months for delivery and then hate it. So I got the cheapest, slowest one I could.

Awesome Stuff

I'm gonna be doing a far bit of nitpicking in this blog.. but let me preface that by saying this is the best car I've ever owned. Even the 75D's acceleration pisses all over my RRS. Driving it is simple, smooth, fun.
The touch screen is awesome. The satnav is awesome. The amount of settings is awesome. The mobile app is awesome.
The boot is HUGE, and you can put stuff in the frunk too.

Charging

I didn't bother getting a proper charger, so I'm just plugging it into the normal wall socket. This is a slower charge but it makes no real difference to me. I drive about 1.5 hours a day total, so it's more than enough. One week I didn't bother charging it at all, and the battery only got down to 40%.
After about a week you stop thinking about charging. I haven't done any big roadtrips yet - but I don't envisage those being a problem.. there's superchargers everywhere and they give a full charge in minutes. The satnav also shows how much battery you'll have when you get to the destination.

Computer

The computer is pretty fast. It's not megafast and megasmooth, like an ipad. It's more fast like an off brand tablet. It's got always on internet.
The web browser is junk. No idea what it is, but it doesn't always render webpages properly and doesn't support video. It works in a jam, but I would have loved to be able to stream youtube or bbcnews while I'm driving.
The satnav is first class. Can't fault it.
The car doesn't come with a manual, you can browse it in the car. I'm guessing this uses their browser though, because it can be a bit slow and akward to navigate.
The settings and controls are great. Feels like an iphone. Always kind of worried though, because I have accidentally opened the doors twice. And if you open the front trunk you have to get out and close it manually.. a bit embarrassing in a queue of traffic.
The music app is great, but not perfect. Having spotify on there is really really awesome, but there's a few things missing.. like the 'daily mixes'. There's also their internet radio app.. which seems to have a ton of shit I haven't explored. One disappointing thing is that it has a ton of podcasts here that don't play (like athletico mince).. so don't throw your phone away yet. I haven't used the actual radio.

Cameras

The car has a shitload of cameras surrounding it.. but the only camera you can pull up is the reversing camera. The reversing camera is the best quality I've ever seen, but it's disappointing that you can't see through the others. Although I get the point that you'd never use them anyway.. it'd just be cool as fuck.
You'd expect with all this tech and shit that it'd have a dashboard cam built in. It hasn't. Musk has alluded that it might be coming.. but I wouldn't count that chicken yet.

Updates

The car gets software updates over the air every few weeks. The latest one added auto high beams. This was one of the big selling points for me.
I see parallels with the iPhone. When it first came out it was nothing. Then they updated the OS for free, for everyone. This was in an ecosystem where the OS upgrade was why people were buying a new phone. This is the same with cars. If you design it right you don't need to keep selling new ones, you can update the old ones.
It's a terrible business idea until people start buying your product because of that.

In Car Purchases

When I ordered my Tesla I didn't get one with the self driving and autopilot shit. I wanted the shittest car. I assumed this was all extra hardware.
So I was surprised afterwards when looking at my account on the website to find that I could enable that shit by clicking a button and paying £5,000.. cuz it's all just software.
You could make the argument that this is shitty, and the car is capable and it's your car so it should all be enabled by default. I understand that argument. But I also understand how regular car makers charge extra for features, so if you remove the logic that it's literally paying thousands of pounds for them to change one bit from a 0 to a 1, then it's not so bad.

Autopilot

Autopilot is nice. It's easy to switch on, although you do end up pulling the wrong stalk and flashing people for the first couple of weeks.,
They've kind of done the apple thing of giving something a name and pretended it's something special. It's basically traffic aware cruise control. It speeds up if nothing is in front, and slows down if something is. It's meant for queues of traffic and motorway.. I tried it down some normal roads and it copes okay, until it comes up to parked cars on the side of the road.. then it breaks suddenly.
They also have autosteer, which is a bit more impressive. It seems to need well lined roads.
Both of these features have a fundamental problem for me. You really need to sit there and watch them, ready to grab the wheel or break. You can't sit there and read the newspaper while the car is driving along. Well you can, but you probably wouldn't want to.
So for that reason I feel like if you're sitting there, watching the road, holding the wheel, hovering the break pedal.. you might as well just drive. Maybe it's just me but I'd rather be doing something than sitting there watching it be done.

Summon

You can move the car forward and backwards from outside the car. It can open the garage door too.
People hear about summon and think you press a button and it drives from a parking space and comes and picks you up. Not yet.
You're meant to be able to use the fob to move the car, but apparently you can't do that in the UK.. so you have to get your phone out, unlock it, open the app, wait for it to connect to the car, then hold the button down to move it.

Full Self Driving

The people on reddit quote like the bible that it's coming before the end of 2017. It's not. It's 5-10 years away and it will need a hardware upgrade.

Annoyances

There's no auto window wipers. It's coming in a future software update apparently.
The big front window is really nice, but the sun visors are junk. Get some sunglasses. Get something to clean it too - because it's so annoying seeing how filthy it is where the wipers don't get it.

Summary

I love this car. I love Tesla. I'm excited for the future. I'm going to order the best, fastest model X when our new house is built.